


The Northern Lights

by SinningVirtue



Series: Live as Less Than Human [4]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Finally a Relationship, M/M, Protective Steve, Tony Feels
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 08:43:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/607954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinningVirtue/pseuds/SinningVirtue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve wishes he could pin down the lights in Tony's eyes. Wishes he could take them by the endless threads and stretch them out across the sky so everyone could see how beautiful they were. So everyone could read out the reactor-blue breathless energy and find all the hope and fear and love and loss and endless belief in the people he fought for. So the hazy sky over New York City could dance with something real and pure and endlessly entrancing. </p><p>They could find the Northern Lights close to home and trace them back to an ice-colored reactor and red and gold metal. </p><p>Then, no one would call him anything less than what he was: a hero.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Northern Lights

**Author's Note:**

> The first chapter of this kind of got lost in the Christmas rush, so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the people who'd read the first three just couldn't find it again.

He wished they’d unfrozen him onsite, sheltered from the cold and kept warm and close with the press of an alien future. Starktech and SHIELD uniforms. He wished they’d carved the ice away from his bones and woken him up while they were still within breathing distance of the wreck, and he wished they’d done it at dawn, so he could see the Northern Lights.

 

 

So the light could have kept the pain from crystallizing his lungs, so he could realize for one of those, hard-pressed and wrapped-tight moments, that there was still something recognizable on this older earth. In his aging home.

 

 

So his breath could have been stolen again by the ancient swirls of unfathomable color against the stars and he could imagine souls caught up in it, pieces of ghosts wrapped tight in a bridge to heaven. He could have tried to make out Peggy’s smile in the twisting lines.

 

 

Steve wished they’d let him keep that, close and warm in his breast pocket, for his heart to beat against. A moment of peace and possibility, before the world set in. Before the sun fully rose.

 

 

He could have been introduced to new light slowly, an in-between of the worlds held in that balance of light and dark, where a color cuts through blackness. This blackness, this breadth of nothingness below him, where he felt frozen but could not feel the cold. Where he felt blinded by the darkness.

 

 

There was no ice-clear blue beneath the brim.

 

 

It did not cut through the water, or seem to shiver with its movements in the cold.

 

 

It did not dance full against a dark canvas.

 

 

But it did contain a soul.

 

 

Xx

**Power level 0.25%**

 

 

Xx

 

 

So Steve Rogers threw off the four agents holding him back and ripped his cowl back and away from his face and ran. Pieces of his bangs stuck to his forehead, and he felt heavy and dirty with sweat and grime and blood. He could see the water, rushing and white inside the aqueduct, a torrent as it dared to meet the next barrier and crash and rage against its walls.

 

 

“ _Cap it’s suicide!_ ”

 

 

“ _Rogers!”_

 

 

“ _You---_ “

 

 

And he jumped.

 

 

The water was choke-freezing. Where the cold climbed inside of you, dug claws into your skin and burrowed into your veins, and Steve was reminded of the flavor of ice. Of the color of a subzero sea. He drowned inside a thought, a feeling, and kept going.

 

 

There was no light, but not in the way other things had no light. Not in the way the Depression had no light, candle wax clotting their fingers as they tried to make their flames last, in the way they got a light bulb for Christmas and did their chores and schoolwork by its light in the kitchen for a month. The way children cried when it finally went out. Or in the way Germany had no light, when the Commandos moved in darkness by the color of the stars, moving from camp to camp without sound.

 

 

There was no light in the way death had no air. In the way the sun had no winters.

 

 

This was not the absence of light; this was the presence of blackness, of the abyss.

 

 

Steve tumbled inside the arms of the darkness, and he felt like Tony must have, when he fell heavy and shining from the sky into the Hudson, only with the weights reversed. He felt like a small bird, pressed with all the burdens of the world and torn from flight. He was not heavy, everything else was.

 

 

His body was thrown against the concrete siding by the rush of water; he could feel himself crack and bow against the walls, could feel the rush over him. Pinned as a butterfly by the wings, he thrashed against the torrent of stretching freshwater sea as it extended its limbs into confined space.

 

 

He could feel water catch in the well of his lungs and bruises bloom across his back, could feel his shoulder threaten against the cage of its socket. Across the planes of his skin, it was like he was being torn away. Like he was being picked apart and scattered on the river. Pieces of Doombots slammed into him on all sides, tore away at his suit and made homes in his skin, dragged across his chest with sharp metal fingers and moved on by the force of the current.

 

 

He screamed into the water.

 

 

He couldn’t breathe.

 

 

Couldn’t breathe. Could only bend his body to whim of the rush. And he felt as he did in the moments before the crash, when he could have imagined the Northern Lights pressing against the sides of the plane and lifting him by the heartstrings up and up and up until he faded into the stars: cold and alone.

 

 

The Captain could picture the warrior, cradled in the hands of ancient, eternal gods at the bottom of an aqueduct, streams and rivers leeching the breath from his lungs, stealing all the empty spaces on the inside of the suit. He wondered if Tony’s face was slack, his eyes closed and breath bleeding from his lips into the dark underworld of his nightmares, a bucket in Afghanistan.

 

 

Or if he was afraid, if his lips trembled and his body rocked with the phantom shocks of a car battery, if rivers spread along electrical veins and he felt every cold-slide drop inside of his body.

 

 

If his eyes were wild, all pupil and absorbing every detail. If he saw lights behind his eyes because of the weight, if he saw nothing at all. If he got lost, and didn’t know which way was up.

 

 

He wondered if Tony’s lips were cold, if he could breathe life back into him. If he had any breath left at all.

 

 

His chest burned, and the sting of open wounds fed the water.

 

 

Steve braced his hands against the side and curled tight against the barrage, dug his fingertips into the stone and pushed.

 

 

It was almost like flying.

 

 

Xx

**Power level .13%**

 

 

Xx

 

Clint couldn't breathe. None of them could.

 

The water had swallowed them both so completely, and the darkness told no tales of Red or White or Blue or Gold. There was nothingness, a kind of total dark that swallowed him up from the inside, and made him think of Bangladesh in the winter and sleeper cells in the Czech Republic and all the sin that wormed its way into his soul, the evil in his chest. It made him think of being alone, of staring in the mirror and finding his face swollen and foreign, of forgetting his parents' names. Of forgetting his own name, there, for a while.

 

Of emptiness.

 

He thrashed against the SHEILD agents holding him, pushed and raged against their shaking hands, screaming mindless nothing words. Just screaming to scream. For the hell of it.

 

None of them were supposed to go like this, so lost.

 

Sometimes Clint thought about his time in the circus, when the tightrope threatened to give beneath him and the wind swayed his body in the breeze. When the clowns woke him at odd hours of the night and his fingers bled around the stiff string of his bow. When he didn't know what family was, or what it meant to have a home.

 

" _ **Let me go! Goddammit Coulson, let me the fuck**_ **go!** "

 

The hands on him grew tighter and he felt himself collapsing, his hand pressed to the comm unit and praying for something more than static. He felt Natasha wrestled to the ground beside him, her teeth bared and a slew of Russian curses passing from her lips. Doom was packed tightly away in their plane. He didn't even want to know what they did with Banner and Thor, he couldn't see them. Could see nothing but the hole, but the water. He could see metal and wood splintering in the swirl of white. Nothing else.

 

They were lost in the oblivion. Clint close his eyes against the white water, and prayed.

 

Xx

 

Steve couldn’t see the reactor, couldn’t see the cold-blue glow he’d grown so used to falling asleep by, using as a reading lamp, tracing out in the early hours of the morning. There was a warm, wet kind of radio silence that filled him up and pressed against the side of his ear, where his comm unit had been ripped out in the rush.

 

 

He was alone.

 

 

Steve cut through the water on oxygen-starved lungs and willpower alone, searching out the next open circle of light that could cut through the abyss darkness.

 

 

Panic hummed through him, and Tony was dead, trapped at the bottom of God’s playpen swallowing water down and down and down just like he did in the desert and he was lost and he couldn’t find his way back and the reactor had died and shrapnel was cutting through his heart and Steve didn’t get to kiss him again and tell him how much he loved him. Tony was pinned and bleeding and backed up against the walls, trapped and needing and if Steve could trade all the air in his lungs and all the life in his blood for Tony above the surface, he’d do it.

 

 

He’d strip the very fabric of himself if it meant Tony could keep going. He’d press the Northern Lights into his eyes and let him see the world and breathe for him and make their heartbeats match.

 

 

If he could save him. Just this once, if he could save him, Steve would give him anything.

 

 

Xx

**Internal water supply at maximum capacity, oxygen levels 0.00%. Life signature dropping at a 20% rate. Heat signature identified. Captain Steven Rogers, Avenger, approaching. Routing .04% emergency power to signal lights.**

****

****

**_Do hurry, Captain._ **

 

 

Xx

 

 

Steve could feel pieces of himself stripping away, thoughts and dreams and hopes and wishes and prayers lost in the water as he pushed himself towards the bottom. The pressure on his head seemed to scream at him, fresh wounds begged for stillness.

_I just want to save him_ floated away on the current and _Not like this, not like this_ scraped against the cement siding. _He can’t die_ lingered in his lungs.

 

 

Time meant nothing, as he tore through the still-rushing water, swirling and crashing inside the cage, water meeting water and whirl-pooling into chaos around him. Inside him.

 

 

He felt shattered and indestructible.

 

 

Hopeless and unstoppable.

 

 

If he could just keep going, avoiding huge pieces of metal Doombots and splinters of the wooden wall, broken by the weight of the world. A sharp sheet of hide carved a home into his thigh.

 

 

If he could just hold on to this last breath.

 

 

If he could just

 

 

stop

 

 

the

 

 

s

   l

     i

      p

        p

          i

           n

             g

 

 

into that good night.

 

 

Xx

 

 

Tony thought he might be dying. Or dead.

 

 

One or the other.

 

 

He wondered if Heaven would be nice.

_“Nothing could match this-this…aching perfection we’re surrounded by, the pain and fear and hope and courage a-and love. If heaven were just as heartbreakingly perfect, why would God bother to create the world in the first place?”_

 

 

Tony thought God pressed His hands against the fabric of the newly made world and cradled it like He would a child, rocked it to sleep and sang it a lullaby in the darkness of an unwoken universe and pressed. He shoved his palms into the world and warped it. He tore apart Pangaea and swallowed up the Garden in the desert; He blessed a bread basket and cursed an empty land to nothingness. He made hate from the fire in the sun and loneliness from the separation in the stars. He fashioned thought from the bottom of the ocean and love from the wind, so that no one could really grasp it.

 

 

And then He set people free on it.

 

 

It wasn’t an accident, it was by design. Horrible, dangerous design.

 

 

Tony thought, as his body pressed against the stone bottom of the aqueduct, that God was a child, who just wanted to see His toys try to play on their own.

 

 

Xx

 

 

The dawn came quick and hard; it slammed into every level of his consciousness in the same way bombs bring light, the second-sun burns out much too quickly. A flicker-flash of blue-white that could have been a piece of the heavens concentrated, could have been a secreted wisp of the Northern Lights, and then nothingness again.

 

 

Just a spark, two seconds at the most, it seemed to linger in the back of Steve’s eyelids and whisper to him, hold him transfixed inside a moment where his body was at the mercy of the current, where the scratches on his back refused to scream and the weight on his limbs became nothingness. There was only him and the light, him and this dawn.

 

 

And. Just. Like. That.

 

 

He woke up.

 

 

Xx

**Power level 0.00%**

 

 

Xx

 

 

Ignite.

 

 

There was a fire on the inside of his lungs, that burned away the water and set his heart on edge, it held him fixed on a razors edge, with the dull ache of breathlessness digging into his body. He fought the current like he would fight his way from a grave, digging his fingers into the fabric of existence around him and dragging himself through it. Until he reached air, until he found light and watched the sun fix itself high up above him.

 

 

He swam as if through flames, as if he was running from the Devil himself in the very heart of his kingdom, as if he was burning alive, as if he was shocked awake from a thousand years of sleep. He was alive, could hear his own heartbeat hammering in his ears in confirmation, as if his whole body was telling him this was real.

 

 

He wasn’t floating.

 

 

He was flying, fighting, running from the very edge of death and he could picture a train in the mountains, skidding along the tracks with warped metal reaching for the expanse of white with curled claws. A man dangling from its steel fingers, wild-eyed and desperate.

 

 

He could remember frothy-mouthed soldiers pulled from the arms of Nazi camps with their eyes yellowed over and their fingers slow and clumsy, and the bitter tang of fear on the tip of his tongue when they looked at him, dead and sunken.

 

 

Steve had been here before, on the precipice of the end of the very world with the abyss open and gaping. With no one to save him and a star on his chest and a weight on his shoulders and a need to get closerclosercloser, not close enough to wrap his fingers around a clammy, shaking hand, or take away the deadness in a soldiers eyes. But close enough for this.

 

 

Close enough to halt this end and tear through this space.

 

 

Shaking, weightless hands found the edge of red and gold, gripped the hard curve of a metal plate and could imagine apocalyptic riders watching over him, the Darkest of them rushing to his side to breathe deep and slow against Steve’s lips. The edges of his limited vision were encroached with a different kind of blackness, the kind that stayed six feet below the ground in a wooden box.

 

 

He pushed, the muscles in his back burning and straining against the immovable object.

 

 

He wouldn’t let this become Tony’s metal casket.

 

 

He braced his feet against the stone bottom and shoved, used the momentum to lift them, to cut through the expanse of swirling water and pieces of debris, shoving through the corpses of Doombots and the lingering horsemen in the very edges of his midnight dreams. Just. Keep. Going.

 

 

A shaft of light cut a haze through the blackness, and turned the water green-grey, and Steve dove towards it like it could give him all the answers to the world. Like it could illuminate every dark corner and breathe life into his bones. Like it was God answering a prayer, angels singing on a battlefield, like it was the safe landing of a fallen soldier in the Alps, a science experiments eyes becoming a man’s again.

 

 

He watched his hands come into view, the torn red gloves of his uniform glowing in the bright light, a new dawn inside their night, like the Northern Lights had mixed and blended and danced their way into their eyes. His palm was cut down the center, a new love line forged from the sharp bite of metal debris, deep and lasting.

 

 

His wealth dotted with scrapes; his life lay untouched.

 

 

He held onto Tony as they sank again to the bottom, as the weight pushed them down and down and down, until Steve could push off again. They shot upwards and nothing could stop them and no prayer or wish or immortalized dream could ever amount to the feeling of water rushing past his face, slipping into his nose and gathering in his lungs. He must have been under for five minutes.

 

 

Five long, endless minutes.

 

 

 The Dark horseman breathed down the back of his neck, and Steve wondered when it was that he stopped feeling the water, when it just became something _other_ , like Tony said: _existence where you can’t exist._ He imagined its grip on them to be inconsequential, it didn’t care if they lived or died, was only mildly annoyed by the intrusion of its flowing, endless body.  

 

 

His hand broke the surface first, stinging and scraped raw, blood swirling with beads of water as it clung mindlessly to the edge of the hole; the red fingers of his glove were almost nonexistent, torn to tenuous shreds by the force of water and concrete and metal.

 

 

His arm shook dangerously, weak and heavy, as he dragged them up and into the air.

 

 

Xx

 

 

Clint saw them first.

 

 

His bow slipped from stiff fingers and clattered onto the stone top of the aqueduct. It seemed to fall in slow motion, like the world had suddenly stopped turning and time crawled to nothingness. Like a feather caught on the wind, lost and endless in the breeze.

 

 

It was like watching a thousand sunrises on fast forward.

 

 

Water droplets caught the sun and threw light, sparkled back into their eyes like a hundred thousand stars, gathered up in the palm of Captain America's hand and flung free with the blood and dirt that clung to his twisted face. The choked gasp Steve took seemed to rebound through the spaces between them, like a desperate sob. Like the last prayer of a dying man. Like the endless wheel had suddenly halted long enough for his heart to restart.

 

 

Clint was running before Steve had finished swallowing his air, watching blood and dirt cling to open wounds and scratches on his face and rivers run from the eyes of a slack Ironman.

 

 

In a moment, a singular, horrible moment, Clint could see everything. The blood running down into Steve's wild blue eyes, the way he grit his teeth against the strain, his blonde bangs streaked with dirt and caked with blood, his body corded and broken with the weight of the suit in his arms, his frayed red glove slipping from the edge of the manhole.

 

 

The water promised to claim them again.

 

 

" _Cap! Hold on **!**_ "

 

 

He could feel Natasha on his heels, could feel the concrete blurring beneath him, the sun on his back and the wind against his face. His heart seemed to hum instead of beat, a flurry of panicked breaths and beats and moments concentrated. He was so close, needed to be closercloser.

 

 

Steve's mouth opened in the beginnings of a shout, something that would come out strong and sure and commanding with all the experience and backbone being Captain America gave you. The water shushed him like a mother would a child. Clint watched blood-shot blue eyes beg just above the brim and fall under again. Ironman fell below the surface, and Steve screamed into the water, muffled and wet and broken.

 

 

" ** _Cap!"_**

 

 

He slid like he would for home plate, the concrete eating away the skin on his elbows and his breath coming quick and hard. A red glove reached up for the sun, it was shredded and bleeding.

 

 

And Clint caught it.

 

 

Xx

 

 

Steve could see the sun, could taste it on the tip of his tongue, past the blood and metal and endless, _endless_ water. Could feel Tony slipping in his arms. Down.

 

 

Always down and away.

 

 

He swallowed past the rush of water and tried to keep himself from screaming, tried to hold onto his air, tried to stay afloat, tried to keep his grip. Just tried.

 

 

For everything.

 

 

Most times, Steve knew there was a God, and sometimes, he even thought He was loving. But not now.

 

 

Now there was just the water, just the weight in his arms and the burn in his lungs.

 

 

And finally, beautifully, the hold around his wrist. The steel grip on his hand, the anchor.

 

 

If there was a God, Steve would thank him, tears in his eyes and blood staining his skin. Steve would thank him as long as Tony's lights came back on, if the cavern of his chest burned bright ice blue and the Northern Lights stayed bright without another soul, another ghost.

 

 

_Not him. Don't take him._

_  
_Air came to him so sweetly, rushing into his skin and flooded past his lips. He gasped around it, swallowed it deep down into his lungs with a ragged, harsh sound that grated on his ears and made him think of men clawing their way out of hell, of warriors in battle, of men climbing out of water-logged trenches.

 

 

And the sun again, a new kind of dawn, for him and Tony alone. For the two of them to secret away inside their breast pockets and carry with them everywhere. His grip on Clint's forearm tightened. He breathed, and kept breathing, choking on the wind and the sun and holding it deep down inside of him. His heartbeats made an off-beat kind of music in his ears, the kind you danced to with your sweetheart at the local bar.

 

 

" _Cap, I got you. Hold on. Just hold on!_ "

 

 

It was kind of like a sunrise, slow and tenuous and so heartbreakingly beautiful.

 

 

Tasting the sun and wearing the night at his back, Steve clawed his way out of hell, out of the trench, out of the battle. Strong hands, capable hands, took hold of Tony's armor. But Steve didn't let go. Couldn't.

 

 

They came into the light together, into the light with Steve clutching Red and Gold.

 

 

And then everything sped up. 

 

 

Sometime between leaving the water and landing on the concrete, Steve's hand was ripped from Tony's armor, and the faceplate was pried off. The sun had made a pleasant home on the back of his neck, and blood painted abstract art on the stone top of the hellish night. His chest heaved, angry and open in too many places, cuts decorated the canvas of his skin and _he couldn't get enough air._ He rolled onto his side, convulsing and shivering and was sick onto the concrete. He trembled, his stiff fingers opening and closing, trying to find purchase.

 

 

"Cap? Cap open your eyes, you have to open your eyes, Steve."

 

 

Clint's voice made it through the roaring in his ears, soft and careful and afraid. Sometimes it hit him, hard and fast between the ribs, how lucky he was. He was so close to falling away to, to letting himself float down into nothingess, with the bright colors of his uniform drowned out by the ease with which he could go away and--

 

 

" _Tony!_ "

 

 

He coughed, blood speckling the concrete and his whole frame shaking.

 

 

Steve thought of midnights, of drawing his fingertips down the sharp bone of Tony's hip, of reading by the arc reactor's light, of peppering kisses and whispers across the curve of his collar bone, of falling in love with him all over again, every single night, by the light of New York City. He thought about kissing him, of tasting him on the tip of his tongue and and swallowing down moans and sighs and that breathless noise Tony made when he hit the pillows after twenty five hours in the lab. He thought about laughing around touches and tickles and watching Wall-E in the lab in the early hours with Dummy and JARVIS and endless cups of coffee and catching him by surprise with a kiss before a business meeting.

 

 

Tony looked so cold.

 

 

The faceplate had been peeled off by Thor, shucked to the side while Coulson rushed to shock him back to life. Steve crawled, as if through slow motion, towards the still body of the Ironman, and he hated to think how many times they'd ended up here. How many times it had all melted away until was just them against the world and Tony clinging to his last lingering breath, a last goodbye on his lips, a smartass reply ready to be voiced and threatening to give before it met the air. To shatter inside his chest and stay caught in his throat. Or now, when he was so _still._ Like every last glimpse of life had been drained from him, and Steve wanted to kiss him again. Wanted to say that he loved him, wanted to hold on and never let go.

 

 

He brushed his fingertips against Tony's cheek.

 

 

"Wake up you sonofabitch."

 

 

Shock. "We don't have enough power," Coulson muttered to himself.

 

 

"Wake up. Don't do this to me," Steve whispered, slipping his hands down into the mask and holding his face between strong, unsteady hands. He looked up at Thor, eyes panicked and lost and burning that wild kind of blue. The ancient God nodded slowly, grimly, and Steve could feel Clint's hands on his shoulders, prying him away from the hard-edged armor.

 

 

Shock. Nothing.

 

 

" _Stark! Not after everything!_ _Wake up! **Tony wake**_ ** _up_ , _please_!** **"**

**  
**And lightning broke from the sky, concentrated on his chest, and breathed life back into him, sent the Northern Lights back into his eyes and his lungs and his chest were filled with something more, something so much like magic, so much like raw energy crackling and manic between Tony's skin and Steve's eyes. And it was like finally being able to breathe.

 

 

 **"** _Motherfucker!_ Jesus Christ, I am not fucking Aquaman! This was not in my job description. I am not designed for this kind of longterm submergence in a place where I cannot breathe. It's not good for my digestion. _" **  
**_

__

__

_"Oh thank god,"_ Steve whispered, collapsing onto Tony's wild-eyed form, alive and starved of air. The blue of the arc reactor pressed against his face, and Steve imagined it would imprint on him, draw circular lines on his cheek or his chest or his heart and make its home there. He'd be okay with that. He'd love that. Tony coughed above him, and water splashed onto the warm concrete. His brown eyes were burning, endlessly searching for blue and so, so afraid. Like he'd met Death himself and crawled. bleeding and sobbing back into the light. Like he'd woken from a nightmare again, and he needed Steve to hold onto. Just Steve. 

 

 

"Steve?!" 

 

 

He didn't answer, just surged up to meet his lips, uncaring of the eyes on them, the people that huddled close around him. He kissed him, and whispered _I love you_ into his mouth, traced _don't leave me_ into the armor and just held on. And Tony kissed back, kissed like he'd been dead or dying or worse. Kissed like there was a fire on the inside of his chest, like this was worth more than breath. Like each moment spent locked together, spent stealing air and tasting wind and blood and sweat, was worth more than life itself.

 

 

Steve agreed.

 

 

This was more than the first. This was fast and hard and needy and desperate, this was two men fearing death, this was holding on, this was clinging to the only thing they knew, this was breathing. This was the Northern Lights passed between them, flooding into their skin and settling down into their bones. This was dawn, their own private sun rising on the night. And this was so much more.

 

 

This was waking up.

 

 

Xx

 

 

_**Thank you, Captain.** _

 

**Author's Note:**

> Shorter than usual, I know, but I felt like it was the right place to end it.


End file.
